WHAT IS VISIBLE IS CLEAR: VISUAL AIDS AS A MEANS OF TEACHING GRAMMAR IN JUNIOR SCHOOL

Abstract

The article faces the problem of visualizing grammatical material as an effective methodological approach to teaching grammar in junior schools. Visual aids used in teaching grammar represent didactic material as pictures, sketches, animated cartoons, films, flash-cards, etc. Employing eye-catching images for the purpose of teaching a foreign language has ever been and still remains a key-question not only in this country, but also abroad. The discussion of physical layers of perception as a specific means of acquiring and accumulating knowledge about the surrounding world is motivated by our wish to prove that visual aids provide children with a double support for their newly-acquired knowledge, granting a better comprehension of the necessary amount of grammatical material. On the one hand, junior children are used to reading books with illustrations or pictures or watching films on the screen for their personal enjoyment. On the other hand, visualization of grammar rules / system gives them an opportunity to conserve the grammatical material required by the school programme on two levels, one of logic and the other of emotions. Images that already exist in their minds as fixed entities associated with a certain emotional feedback are reflected in their conscience again, this time as ready-to-use grammatical forms and speech patterns. The urgency of the problem studied follows from the steady interest of teachers to the method of visualization itself and is motivated by the lack of grammatical exercises and instructions based on the given approach. The object of our study is a set of different types of visual aids used by teachers in the process of explaining and drilling grammatical rules. The subject of this work is the psychological essence of the grammar-visualization method in junior school practice. The objective of this paper consists in singling out the most effective visual aids used for the purpose of teaching grammar in junior school. The authors argue that visualizing different aspects of English grammar by means of employing various images in class during the lesson (like children’s favourite fairy-tales, characters’ pictures or animated cartoons personages) makes the teachers’ explanation of grammar sound easier for the pupils and contributes to enhancing the kid’s grammatical competence by approximately 15 % altogether. The near perspectives of our future investigation we see in studying computer games and comics as a means of visualizing grammar.